


nothing but the raw deal

by notbang



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:47:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25990816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notbang/pseuds/notbang
Summary: “You said you liked the beard!” he says, an edge of panic dislodging some of the quintessential haughty defensiveness from his voice.“I did like the beard,” she assures him. “Guatemala looks good on you."
Relationships: Rebecca Bunch/Nathaniel Plimpton
Comments: 11
Kudos: 36
Collections: Rethaniel Appreciation Week





	nothing but the raw deal

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt 'friction' for day three of Rethaniel Appreciation Week.

It takes her a minute to register her surroundings when she stirs, unfamiliar as she is with them, even if the person currently sharing their sheets with her is someone she knows almost as intimately as herself, at this point.

“Mmm, good morning,” Rebecca hums, stretching and curling into him.

She’s just in the middle of craning her neck to get at his mouth to steal a kiss—morning breath be damned—when Nathaniel wraps a giant palm around her shoulder, holding her at arm’s length.

“What the hell happened to your face?”

“Well, rude,” she says, frowning, and then she starts to get an inkling of what he’s talking about because the pull of the grimace makes her skin feel tight and hot and sore. “Ugh. Dude. You. You happened to my face.” She shifts experimentally and immediately winces, dropping back down and burying her head with a sleepy, disgruntled groan. “And apparently also to places that are not my face.”

Re-emerging from beneath her pillow, she flips back the blankets, exposing the entirety of the unmistakable path of irritated skin rising into welts between her breasts and grazing a trail across her belly and below. Her left inner thigh got the brunt of it, she notes with only some mild contortion, where the general blotchiness is already breaking out into angry little red spots.

Nathaniel, to his credit, looks vaguely horrified.

She waves him off. “It’s fine, it was self inflicted. Kinda.” He raises a disbelieving eyebrow at her. “Fine—it was definitely mostly self inflicted, based on the indisputable fact that I was the one enthusiastically sitting on your face. Not that you needed much encouragement, for the record. And not to mention that you’re, like, the one with the face of a thousand spiky deaths that inspired the enthusiastic riding to begin with.”

“You said you _liked_ the beard!” he says, an edge of panic dislodging some of the quintessential haughty defensiveness from his voice.

“I _did_ like the beard,” she assures him. “Guatemala looks good on you. I’m just having some second thoughts about it now, in the cold light of day, where my entire body is on fire.” She swears she sees him pale in response, so she can’t resist grabbing for her foot and teasing, “Oh, nope—see, you missed a spot.”

Expression pinched, he continues to bristle about it as he gets up and sets about collecting their scattered clothing from where it’s been strewn across his hardwood floor, and it doesn’t entirely make sense, the way this prickly back and forth with him in the immediate aftermath of their long-awaited reunion fills her with such overwhelming fondness.

Nathaniel’s new apartment is bigger than his old one, but the interior design is currently a lot less magazine spread, a lot more living out of the miscellaneous boxes he’s only recently pulled from storage. One of the pitfalls to his bed actually being enclosed in, well, a _bedroom_ this time around is that when he disappears to the bathroom, he’s both completely out of sight _and_ earshot.

When he comes back, his jaw is entirely clean-shaven.

“Wow. You work quick.” When he shoots her a pointed look—something distinctly in the vein of _you of all people should know why!_ —she can’t help but grin. “Aww. You’re so cute when you think you’ve somehow ruined your chances with me by giving me the ol’ stubble trouble.”

He still isn’t sharing in her amusement—she supposes she should know, by now, that making fun of him is always going to elicit a mixed bag—so she switches her expression to reassuring instead. “Nathaniel, honestly, it’s no big deal. I’ll slap some moisturiser on it and buy some concealer for my chin. Worst case scenario, I walk with an unfortunate waddle for a day or two. Which, you know what? Is just as easily blamed on… other parts of you than your facial hair. Also, how has this never happened to you before? When I first met you the razor-sharp scruff was basically your whole look.”

“Huh,” he says, some of the tension going out of him as he considers this, last night’s shirt still hanging limply in his hand. “Guess I never stuck around long enough—or paid enough attention—to find out.”

She pouts out her lower lip and places a hand to her heart. “See? That just makes it all the more romantic that you’re here, experiencing this ordeal with me now.”

He huffs, making a beeline for his hamper.

Having lost interest in his ongoing need to channel his persistent unease into creating some kind of order from their collective chaos, she collapses back on the bed, sticking her legs up in the air and splitting them, making a pathetic noise in accompaniment but on the whole completely unconcerned with her own—admittedly unseemly—display.

“Is that really necessary?” Nathaniel asks, pulling a face. “Does that actually help?”

“Unless you plan on getting in there with some WD-40, yeah, this is what we’re doing right now. Why, you expecting guests, or something?”

He balls up her light blue underwear and throws them at her. “Would you put on pants if I were?”

“I mean, I would probably be forced to consider it, yeah.”

“Glad to hear you still have a shred of dignity intact.”

“It is hanging by an admittedly small thread.”

After a long moment of staring at her, during which she makes no attempt to decrease the degree of her exposure, a strangled kind of cough works its way out of him that she thinks might finally be a laugh.

She drops her legs even wider and props herself up on her elbows to get a better look at him. “Are you having a stroke?”

“No,” he says, turning away briefly to compose himself. “I just—You’re so—I don’t know.” His eyes slink slowly back to hers. “I don’t… _know…_ anyone like you.”

It could just be coincidence—that she’s merely reaching the upper limits of her own admittedly measly muscular endurance—but her knees start to cave in on her a little. She sits up properly, a toothy smile blossoming across her face of its own accord. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Nathaniel affirms, and comes to sit beside her on the bed.

After a few seconds of contented silence, she asks, “Nathaniel?”

“Mmm?”

“Did you just fall a little bit in love with me while I was bearing my beard-burned vagina at you?”

He makes a show of sighing loudly and rolling his eyes away from her, so she knows without a glimmer of doubt that the answer is yes. Heart bright and full, she grabs his hand in hers and squeezes, re-commanding his attention.

“Hey. I l…ike your new rug,” she says with mock sincerity, waggling her eyebrows at him when he registers the bait and switch. “Wonder what shade of red it’ll bring out in my knees.”

Nathaniel growls, making sure to push her back against the mattress by her relatively unscathed shoulders.

“You’re an asshole,” he tells her lightly, skin smooth against hers, and his voice is laced with nothing but the utmost affection.


End file.
